Espionage Act of 1917

President Obama secretively built a massive counterterrorism apparatus, and now he’s confronting the consequences of expanding his war-making powers: handing them over to a man he said was unfit to serve as commander in chief.

With President-elect Donald Trump weeks away from inheriting them, Obama has taken a new approach, advocating for limits and transparency that he often was content to do without.

In a speech Tuesday, Obama defended his approach to national security and explained the legal and policy underpinnings that his administration used to decide whether and how to detain, interrogate or kill suspected terrorists.

Related "Espionage Act of 1917" Articles

President Obama secretively built a massive counterterrorism apparatus, and now he’s confronting the consequences of expanding his war-making powers: handing them over to a man he said was unfit to serve as commander in chief.
With...

Thirty-one authors have signed an open letter to President Obama, urging him to pardon Edward Snowden, the former U.S. government contractor charged with violating the Espionage Act for leaking National Security Agency documents to journalists.
Writers...

Cases like Edward Snowden’s are precisely the reason the president’s constitutional pardon power exists.
Historically, outgoing presidents have often invoked this power in the last days of their terms — at times on behalf of people who’ve committed...

Although Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" when she mishandled classified information on her private email server, no reasonable prosecutor would bring criminal charges against her, FBI Director James B. Comey claimed Tuesday in a...

Federal law makes it a crime for a trusted U.S. official to “knowingly and willfully” disclose or transmit secret information to an “unauthorized person.” A second law makes it a crime to “remove” secret documents kept by the government or to allow them...

New administrations can mean a change in fortunes for controversial figures. But a Hillary Clinton presidency will not improve the status of Julian Assange, say those aligned with the Wikileaks founder, who remains in Ecuador's London embassy pending a...

Somewhere in the thousands of towering apartment blocks that ring the Russian capital, whistle-blower Edward Snowden remains in hiding two years after outraging U.S. intelligence agencies with revelations of their snooping into the private...

To the editor: Although your editorial encourages Edward Snowden to return to the United States and stand trial, it argues that the American people have the National Security Agency leaker to thank for surveillance disclosure. True. So do terrorist...

When he announced Tuesday that he would sign a bill ending the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' telephone records and making other reforms in surveillance laws, President Obama praised Congress — and himself.
"For the past 18...

Airports are exemplars of our surveillance society. Here a raft of digital surveillance, targeting and sorting systems come together. And they start working well before you arrive for check-in, with the U.S. government comparing your name against watch...

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a California chemical engineer to 15 years in prison and fined him $28 million after his rare economic-espionage conviction for selling China the technology that creates a white pigment.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey...

It seems ironic that a man who was often accused of being effete when he ran for president in 2004 has impugned someone else’s manhood to make a political point.
But that’s what happened Wednesday when Secretary of State John Kerry was asked about...

Re "Why give Panetta a pass?," Opinion, March 9
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou is in federal prison because he broke the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, when he went far beyond the whistle-blowing he states he engaged in by...

The confirmation in December that former CIA Director Leon Panetta let classified information slip to "Zero Dark Thirty" screenwriter Mark Boal during a speech at the agency headquarters should result in a criminal espionage charge if there is...

Is Edward Snowden a whistle-blower or a traitor?
Debate over the renegade computer technician who leaked thousands of secret National Security Agency documents is too often reduced to that deceptively simple choice.
But it's the wrong way to pose the...

WASHINGTON — University of California President Janet Napolitano, the former chief of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said Sunday that she opposed offering clemency to Edward Snowden, putting herself at odds with a movement that has gained...

BERLIN — German lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele released the text of a letter Friday that he said was given to him by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden during a meeting Thursday in Moscow.
Snowden is calling for international help to...

FT. MEADE, MD. — In his crisp blue uniform, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning rose to his feet in a small crowded courtroom Wednesday morning and was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy...

FT. MEADE, Md. -- A military judge on Wednesday sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison, ending a summer-long court-martial in which he was convicted of espionage for leaking a vast trove of classified U.S. military and diplomatic...